Wednesday 19 March 2014 07.47 EDT
First published on Wednesday 19 March 2014 07.47 EDT

Households are wasting around 570,000 tonnes of fresh meat each year, with a value of £1,300 million, and nearly half of it could be used. According to new book Farmageddon, that's about 50 million chickens, 1.5 million pigs and 100,000 beef cattle. Globally it's close to 12 billion animals: an extraordinary amount of living creatures born to be wasted.

We don't hear much about the land, water and energy being used to produce, process and transport them all because it doesn't appear on food labels. But each burger is a result of a major use of natural resources. Producing, processing and transporting food means using a huge amount of land, water, and energy – largely fossil fuels, that contribute to climate change.

Friends of the Earth's research has shown that forests are being destroyed and lives ruined in South America to produce feed for UK factory farmed livestock.

Most animals reared for food in the UK are no longer grazed on grass or, in the case of pigs and poultry, fed food waste. Instead, over recent decades a highly industrial system has emerged, with animals being housed in large numbers and fed on feed shipped in from all over the globe.

It takes huge amounts of land to grow this feed – a third of all crops grown globally – and in countries such as Brazil and Paraguay, forests are cut down and rural communities thrown off the land to make way for them.

One quarter of global freshwater use, according to a recent study, relates to producing meat and dairy, which is likely to increase if production continues to rise. And livestock is responsible for nearly 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global climate change. Friends of the Earth's Meat Atlas gives a great summary.

In short, wasting food and especially meat uses up valuable resources and in some cases impacts on people's lives.

There are simple steps you can take to make a difference:

• Find out about different date labels. Did you know you can freeze food right up to 24 hours before the use by date?• Use unfamiliar cuts of meat and as much of a carcass as you can, to avoid throwing good food away. • Eat less but better quality meat so that there's less meat to waste and what you do use will be kinder to the planet. Sign up for Meat Free May.•Plan meals, write (and stick to!) a shopping list to save money. Get your portions right and make the most of the food you buy.• Store your food correctly to keep it fresh for longer. • Make last night's leftovers today's feast. • Don't panic in the kitchen or in the aisles – there's plenty of help out there for shoppers. Love Food Hate Waste is packed with easy ways for individuals to reduce the amount of food they throw away. Since its launch consumers have saved £13bn by not buying food that would otherwise have gone to waste.

If you do want to go further and promote better eating in your community, Friends of the Earth has a great EatSmartActionPack full of tips, ideas and resources you can use.

And let's not forget that as consumers we're only part of the picture. Supermarkets need to stop wasting food too. Tesco wasted 28,500 tonnes of food in the first half of 2013 – mainly bakery goods, followed by fruit and vegetables. Dairy products and convenience food like ready meals each made up around 8%.

Supermarkets need to stop over-ordering and demanding cosmetic perfection, and change their marketing strategies for the better, to help farmers and shoppers alike.

What if I told you that it's possible you threw away nearly £700 last year without realising? You probably wouldn't believe me.

Maybe you're great at buying only the food you need and making sure any scraps go in the compost. If so, well done. But research by waste experts WRAP shows that £700 is the amount that an average UK household wastes on food in a year, which is staggering.

For many it is far from easy to cut down on food waste. 'Eat by' and 'best before' labels just confuse, modern fridges are huge and the supermarkets are constantly appealing to our more frugal side with multi-buy 'three for two' offers.